»Man braucht bloß ein paar Laternen aufzustellen, ein paar Bänke und eine Toilette – schon kommen die Leute!«

…erklärte mir eine der Kuratorinnen des Jahresprogramms in der Europäischen Kulturhauptstadt Tallinn. Zugegeben: Das Zitat ist aus dem Kontext gerissen, tatsächlich ködern die Verantwortlichen der beiden Kulturhauptstädte Tallinn (Estland) und Turku (Finnland) ihr Publikum mit etwas umfangreicheren Angeboten. »Avantgarde und Alltag«, mein Artikel zum Selbstverständnis beider Städte, ist ab sofort online zu lesen und ab Donnerstag, 1. September 2011, auch gedruckt in der neuen Ausgabe von KULTURAUSTAUSCH, die an Flughafen- und Großstadtbahnhofskiosken zu kaufen ist.

How not to do a television interview:

I hope this is satire. After all, why would you place a visibly agitated elderly black man with a history in radical politics in front of a red hot building, have a white woman with an air of professional arrogance ask him leading questions (btw, is she mispronouncing his first name as »Marcus« instead of »Darcus«?), tone down his mic when he answers, and cut away to sports without letting him finish the sentence?

Whether Mr Howe’s arguments are legitimate is not for me to judge – and it’s not the point. The point is that if you only watch this clip, it seems as though the UK got its own offshoot of Fox News and it’s called the BBC.

In defense of »laughably primitive« special effects

NYT’s Terrence Rafferty on »Rise of the Planet of the Apes«, starting in European movie theaters tomorrow:

The apes will look, and move, better than they ever have. But it has to be said that the movie science fiction of the original Apes era, with its now laughably primitive effects, in some ways benefited from its technical crudeness: the spectacle rarely got in the way of the ideas, and when the ideas are engaging, as they are in the first »Planet of the Apes« and »Escape,« the simple effects function like sketches, indications of some greater, not fully realized, narrative and intellectual architecture.

Here’s more. To get an idea what Rafferty’s talking about, here’s the original trailer of »Planet of the Apes« (1968).

And on a slightly different note: The Six Best »Planet of the Apes« Parodies Ever.